then Article Submitter Pro should be on your shopping list. Read what Kai Chandler has to say.

Ask any Search Engine Optimization (SEO) guru what are the secrets of high ranking and he’ll probably laugh. It’s more an art than a science.

However, one such, Brad Callen, recommends that first you fine-tune the pages on your website for the search engines. This is called on-page optimization. To do this you should place your keywords in to the Title, Description, Keywords, Body and Alt tags of images on your page. Also use your keywords in H1 or other heading setting near the top of the body.

However, Brad Callen tells us that off-page optimization is, if anything, even more important.  Off-page optimization is building quality inbound links from other websites to yours. Modern search engines such as Google assess a site’s link popularity when determining its all-important ranking.

Two ways of building quality in-bound links are:

• link exchange
• article writing

Link exchange
Link exchange is swapping links with other sites. The more links that point to your site, the better your ranking.  Links from a popular site as measured by the Google PageRank are the most valuable, but they all help. A free service such as Link Metro can be a useful starting point for this.

Article writing
The second method, article writing, is an incredibly powerful way of getting quality inbound links. The idea is to write short articles of perhaps 500-700 words and submit them to directories of articles where they not only are picked up by the search engines, but also are used as free content for other websites and ezines. 

The conventional format is to omit anchor pages from the body of the article, but to include a ‘resource box’ at the foot of the article. This is where the article author includes a link to the site he wants to promote.

To test this, I recently submitted an article I wrote for Practical PC magazine, called “The Top Twelve Threats No Computer User Should Ignore” After just a few weeks, Google lists 498 occurrences of this article, each of which has an inbound link to my website.

For anyone writing articles, I maintain a list of article directories that welcome article submissions from authors. The link is at the end of this page.  However, there are hundreds of directories that accept articles and submitting to these can represent a significant overhead.

Technology is at hand - a new program Article Submitter Pro, makes light work of the article submission process.

How does Article Submitter Pro work?

You should think of Article Submitter Pro as a database of your articles, combined with a list of sites that accept article submissions and the facility to add your own.

There are really five steps to submitting articles using Article Submitter Pro:

1. Enter your name, address and other personal details including your SMTP server address. This is used for generating emails to those sites requiring email submission.

2. Enter your Bio Box details. This is where you provide a couple of paragraphs about yourself to follow the article. It’s also the place for injecting the result of your copywriting skills as you hope a proportion of readers will click the link you provide.

3. Select the Submission Websites. There’s a well researched list of 488 sites that accept article submissions on the current version of Article Submitter Pro. Some require registration and this is flagged to allow you to enter the username and password from the registration process.

4. Select the Email Submission sites and groups. Certain sites only accept your articles by email. There are 23 listed but you can add as many more as you wish.

5. Article Submission. To submit articles, first you select each article directory, then the submission page is displayed. Article Submitter Pro pastes the text of your article, together with your Bio Box information into the directory’s submission page. You have an opportunity to edit the text at this point. When it’s all displayed to your satisfaction, you select the website’s submit button and your article is submitted. A similar page allows you to submit articles via email.

An excellent feature in Article Submitter Pro is the newly introduced DIY option. This lets you define your own article submission sites as new ones appear. You can also backup and restore your articles and settings, add any number of author names and give each article any number of titles to help you maximise your submissions.

I suggest you preview the mail by sending to yourself first so you can be sure of the layout of what is being sent. Otherwise you’ll have no way to see it.

Support seems very good. The authors, Ken Nadreau and Hubert Daul seem to be online virtually 24/7 and answer any email queries almost immediately. They've committed to send out regular updates so you'll get the most up to date set of article sites.

The latest version (released Jan 4th 2006) brings the total number of sites up to 500, adds a Keyword Tab that you can use to highlight the keywords for each article you submit and also a Favorites tab so all the special sites you want to submit to can be separated from the rest and easily accessible. 
 

Article Submitter Pro is very effective at streamlining the article submission process at a cost effective price. Although there are services that will do this for you, the regular payments for such services soon add up and work out much more expensive over time than purchasing a program such as Article Submitter Pro.

To sum up, if you are serious about promoting your website then Article Submitter Pro is a very cost-effective way to get quality inbound links to help your search engine placement.

Click here for more details:    

Use an Article Submitter such as "ArticleSubmitter Pro" It's available on a 30 day "money back if not satisfied basis." You can submit as many articles as you like, to as many sites as you like. There's also a free 3 day trial copy available from this link: "ArticleSubmitter Pro" .